


Crushed Glass

by cascadingwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel pulls Dean from Hell, Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cascadingwings/pseuds/cascadingwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I sewed you together with threads of my grace; Dean Winchester, you were worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crushed Glass

The first time I heard your name, it was spoken like a curse. Spit from the mouth of my brothers, dark like a roiling storm, shrill like the sounding of an alarm. Your name was dipped in venom and it tasted of steel, stank of death, and dripped fresh blood.  
  
Dean Winchester, you were anything but a curse.  
  
Years ago, I was commanded by my brothers to drag you from the depths of Hell, from a place so dark that even the light of my grace couldn’t taint the blackness. I did so, but not unquestioningly—I could sense my siblings’ fury when they spoke of you, the way their words simmered with contempt and derision when they murmured about “The Righteous Man.” It was clear that they did not believe in you, that they did not believe in the cause. We were all doubtful of our father's intentions, and so I waged a war within myself as I stormed the gates of Hell to bring you back to earth.  
  
When I found you, you were not what I was expecting.  
  
You were fragments. In pieces, like jagged cuts of crushed glass—you were scattered about in that wasteland, strewn like fallen leaves. I thought to myself, How could my father ask that we risk everything for _this_? For this broken, shattered thing?  
  
I seethed with rage for a time, caught in between disbelief and sorrow. We lost lives, brothers, during that siege of Hell, and I wasn’t sure what for. The Righteous Man looked irreparable, not worth the price we had so dearly paid. But I had come there with a mission, and I knew I had to see it through. I reached out to you, bits of soul without body, and I pieced you together again. I sewed you together with threads of my grace; in front of me, you were bound together, and also—perhaps infinitesimally—bound to _me_. It was then that I realized how wrong I had been.  
  
Dean Winchester, you were worth it.  
  
I had been blinded, at first, by what I thought was righteousness of my own—but when you were laid out in front of me, whole for the first time in forty years, I realized that I had instead been blinded by the light of your essence. For your soul was far brighter than any I had ever encountered. It did what my own grace could not: it pierced through the blackness of the darkest place in the universe. You were lit by flames of hope, of love—love so strong, so bright, so great that it spilled out of you and chased away the darkness. I don’t know how I wasn’t able to see it immediately, for it seeped out of every inch of you and cloaked us all in fire. I had been so wrong about you. I put you back together that day, but you changed me, as well—gave me pause for the first time in a millennia, made me question my own essence. You reminded me of my purpose. I was a soldier, but I was meant to fight only in defense. I was meant to be a shepherd, a lighthouse, a beckoning star. I was meant to protect. To lead. To love, like you.  
  
You reminded me of all this in the space of an instant, in the space of a breath, and I knew then that I would never be able to shake you. Your love threw me, like high winds on the shores of the Atlantic; it pressed into the very fibers of my being and remade me.  
  
I put you back together, Dean Winchester, but do not ever think for a second that I somehow _fixed_ you. There was nothing for me to fix. There will never be anything for me to fix. For you were constructed perfectly from the very beginning: a meld of body and soul purer than the likes of any the Earth has ever seen.  
  
Dean Winchester, you were worth it.


End file.
